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THE FIVE
MINUTE PHOTOGRAPHY COURSE |
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"EVERYTHING THAT YOU NEED TO
KNOW ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY" |
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These are the basic "principals of composition". Each one of these
principals should flash through your mind for every photo or potential
photograph that you are about to make. |
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- Before you take the picture, ask yourself why am
I taking this picture? Try to identify what it was that attracted you to
this subject. Is it something that stirs your emotions, or is it the
interplay of light and shadows, or the relationship between your subject
and its surroundings? Whatever it is, you should be able to identify it
before making your photograph.
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- Use the rule of thirds as a starting point in the
overall composition. Position your subjects and elements carefully in
the frame, at or near the intersecting points of the grid to draw
attention to the primary subjects.
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- Look at the tones in the picture and their
placement throughout the picture space. Do they enhance the subject, or
distract from it.
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- What are the colours in your picture? What mood
do they convey? Are any of the colours in the image competitive with the
subject or do they enhance it.
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- Try not to include everything in a scene, rather
distill the essence of the scene with a few of its main components and
include only them. Many times these basic rules are followed yet the
resulting photographs fail because of unwanted and unnoticed distracting
elements.
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- Watch out for distracting backgrounds. The worst
case of this is, the telephone pole coming out of someone's head. When
you are looking through the viewfinder ignore the subject, check the
background is it distracting or too busy?
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- Consider the camera orientation
(vertical/horizontal). One may work better than the other. So many
people take nothing but horizontal photos, just because that's the
easiest way to operate the camera controls.
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- Run your eye around the frame of the viewfinder,
making sure that there aren't any objects creeping into the picture.
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- Camera position and viewpoint. Walk around your
subject looking at it from as many different viewpoints as possible.
This will help you to determine which focal length of lens to use.
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- Keep your horizon line level especially when
working with horizons that are level in nature such as oceans, seas, and
lakes.
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- Add something to the foreground. Landscape and
scenic photographs may be greatly enhanced by having something such as a
flower, rocks, a tree stump, tree in the foreground. Be certain that
both the foreground and the main subject are in focus.
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- Use leading diagonal lines and curves to draw the
viewer's eye into the image and to the main subject, for example, a path
leading into a field.
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- Watch for the amount of negative space in your
composition. Too much will create an imbalance, where the eye drifts off
of the main subject into the void of nothingness. Too little can
compress the subject within the composition and reduce its impact and
balance. It's really your own way of seeing or how you feel about the
subject that will determine what you'll do.
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- Look for patterns in nature and man-made objects.
They often create appealing images all by themselves, for example,
ripples in sand, sumac leaves, water ripples, a stand of trees, columns
in the front of a building, office windows on a skyscraper.
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- Try framing the subject with a simple arrangement
of interesting components around or beside the main subject, such as
between trees, or branches of a tree(s) coming into the picture. This
technique works well to break up a large area of empty sky as well as
creating the illusion of depth in the photograph.
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- Do you really need to include the sky in your
photo? It could distract from your subject. If you need to include it
maybe you can get away with just using a sliver of sky.
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- Choose an aperture that produces the necessary
depth of field. Use the depth of field preview lever (button) to judge
the effect before making the exposure.
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- Choose a shutter speed that controls motion. Do
you want freeze the motion, or intentionally create a blurring movement?
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- Sometimes you just have to walk away without
making a photograph. Maybe the light isn't right - the background is too
distracting - you couldn't get the right the angle, whatever, there are
a lot of different reasons why a photograph won't work. If you think
about the above principals before releasing the shutter, you just might
not!
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